Out and About in Baton Rouge - Out to Lunch - It's Baton Rouge

While New Orleans gets the lion s share of attention for being
Louisiana s premier tourist destination, Baton Rouge has some
offerings of its own. Michael Day is General Manager of the Raising
Cane s River Center, Baton Rouge s premier event facility. Built in
1977, the River Center has more than 14 thousand square meters of
exhibition space, a 12 thousand seat facility for concerts,
performances and sporting events, a ballroom and meeting rooms and
a separate fine arts theater where the Baton Rouge Symphony
Orchestra and Baton Rouge Ballet perform, among others. In the fall
of 2016, the River Center became the Raising Cane s River Center,
when Raising Cane s bought the naming rights for the River Center
for 3.87 million, a deal that was designed to help generate a
little cash that could be used to help refurbish the center.
Michael has been at the helm since 2015. David Beard works right
across the street from Michael at the USS Kidd Veterans Museum,
where he is Executive Director. The Kidd is a World War II era
Fletcher Class Destroyer ship that is one of Baton Rouge s best
known and unique tourist attractions, and David is unique in that
he is the first full time, experienced museum curator to run the
facility, which is significant because he is bringing a whole new
level of expertise to keeping this historical treasure afloat
figuratively, if not literally. David has spent the past two
decades as a museum curator with a specialty on military and
maritime museums. He is a native of Little Rock, Arkansas, who
previous ran military museums in Philadelphia and, most recently
the Museum of the Gulf Coast in Port Arthur, Texas. David and
Michael take Stephanie Riegel behind the scenes at the USS Kidd and
the Raising Canes River Center. Photos at Mansurs On The Boulevard
by Karry Hosford.

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